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Blasting Resumes At Suburban Quarry Months After Quake

McCook, Ill. (CBS) — It was a real mystery back in November when a blast went off at a suburban rock quarry and then seconds later, the ground shook. The question is , was the earthquake related to the blast?

CBS 2’s Roseanne Tellez reports after extensive review by the geological survey and others, quarry officials say they are confident that the blast at the McCook Quarry back in November had nothing to do with the quake that followed.

Yet the same thing happened in 2010, a blast, then four seconds later, a small quake.

So could there be an indirect trigger?

“It’s a rather unusual situation. They’ve not run into this as a normal type of thing so there are no answers readily available,” said Michael Stanczak, a quarry official.

Quarry officials have enlisted the help of Northwestern University to find out more.

“We don’t know enough anywhere in the world about how indirect triggering works,” said Northwestern University Professor Suzan Van Der Lee.

Professor Van Der Lee and two graduate students are collecting data through geophones placed in the ground across from the quarry. There’s much analysis ahead.

“Our belief is if we can find a correlation is if there is one, we can work around it,” said Stanczak.

Some say the bigger problem is the dust and the lack of help from the village of Brookfield.

“It’s pretty insulting. I feel like we get shafted on south end of Brookfield. We really do,” said Ron Ragland.

Roseanne Tellez was in an observation area at the quarry when the blast went off, and reports there was no shaking Tuesday and not even much noise. But the group from Northwestern will continue analyzing data just in case.

Reporter Roseanne Tellez, who joined CBS 2 Chicago in 2004, has been a fixture in Illinois news since the 90s.
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She also serves as a general assignment reporter for the afternoon newscasts at 5 PM and 6...